


Truth or Treason

by filenotch



Series: The Museum Heist Series [3]
Category: Hellblazer, Highlander: The Series, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-29
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filenotch/pseuds/filenotch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos, once known as Fenrir, meets the man he knew as Loki, who he thought was long dead. John Constantine meets Adam Pierson, one of Methos' identities, and the target theft is a glass pomegranate at Harvard's Museum of Natural History.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth or Treason

**Author's Note:**

> This is the John Constantine from the Hellblazer comic, not the one from the movie. Methos is from the 1990's TV series of Highlander. John Blonde is what he is, but he may have come from Zelazny's Courts of Chaos. Standard "for fun and not profit" disclaimers apply. 
> 
> Methos has two names, and Constantine only knows one of them. 
> 
> Written in the early 2000s.

****

**Round 1**

In a crowded bar in the middle of Boston, three men are acutely aware of each other.

Two are blond. The one at the bar covers his head with a broad black leather hat over the yellow braid that tails between his shoulder blades. He wears an oversized black trench coat despite the warmth of summer. John Blonde, he calls himself. The other blond leans against a wall and scratches short hair, then smoothes what had been a carefully styled mess. John Constantine is his name, called Hellblazer by others. He holds a sport coat over one arm, and his tie is loosened. He stands some twenty feet and ten people away from the man in black. He watches, and waits for the third man to move. 

The third sits still, silent, and watching from behind an open laptop. He is dark of hair and fair of skin, though his nose seems Levantine. Or possibly British. He sits on a stool at a high table in the corner, protected from the crowd. Methos, a name of legend among Immortals, looks like a graduate student. If the waitress were less efficient, four empty pint glasses would sit in front of his computer. He is here to solve a mystery that appeared as a personal advertisement in a Pacific Northwest paper.

"Fenrir: Loki requests the pleasure of your company in the Hub of the Universe, where the flower is scorched."

Boston, clearly. "The Hub of the Universe" is one of the more arrogant cities he's known, though not quite as bad as Babylon in its day. The closest thing he could figure to 'scorched flower' was this place -- The Black Rose. And no one has called him Fenrir in over four thousand years. 

The blond man in the tie has been here the past three nights. Perhaps he works in a local office, but something in his manner tells Methos he doesn't fit the type. Before tonight, the hair was too long, for one thing. He doesn't seem to have noticed that Methos has been in this corner every night for a week. 

This is not true. Constantine has been quite aware of him beneath his studied insouciance of smoke and gin. He fits the description John gave him, almost. Dark hair, big nose, ferocious. Constantine can't see ferocity, but that doesn't mean much. John, in his oversized coat and black hat, hides his own secrets, as does Constantine.

It is a Friday night, the most crowded, and something is finally happening. It is the first time that the small man in the black hat has come in, and he moves easily through the crowd towards the bar. A stool becomes empty before he reaches it. His drink appears before he orders it. Methos hasn't seen his face clearly yet, or more importantly heard the voice, but the yellow braid and the short stature tell him it must be Loki.

He last saw him… when? Over four thousand years ago. It is impossible. Methos himself is Immortal, and over five thousand years old, but Immortals know each other from the headache they get in each other's presence. He feels none of that now, and he never felt it then. The question raised by the advertisement to Fenrir remains: How can that obnoxious little shit still be alive?

He's had half an hour plus a week to think it over. Curiosity wins over caution as it does more often than Methos will admit. He puts the laptop in his bag, picks up his beer, and heads toward the bar.

Constantine stands up from his slouch. He drains his gin and follows toward the bar, aiming for a spot a few feet away from the black hat. He wants to watch John in action, see how the little Chaos magician yanks the chain of his latest victim.

With a gesture at his loosely knotted tie, John Constantine gets the attention of one of the barmen. 

"Same again?" 

Constantine nods. His occasional compatriot in the black hat sits just one stool down, and has turned to look at the dark-haired man. Constantine isn't asked to pay for his drink -- that sort of glamour magick is his forte -- and he settles in to watch their reflections in the mirror above the bar. From the looks on their faces, there is something old and deep between them. 

It has begun.

*

The hand Methos places on the black-clad shoulder is hesitant, but it needn't be. The eyes that look up at him from under the hat are welcoming and remembered. Loki. Gray-eyed, blond-headed, and decidedly not dead. Too bad. 

"Fenris Ulfr!" says the familiar voice, speaking in the accents of a very old language. "What name do you use now?"

"Adam Pierson." Methos answers, and in the same tongue says, "You? Can you still call yourself Loki?"

"Call me John." The small man switches to English with American accents. "Blonde, White, LeBlanc - pick a surname. Or if you don't like those I'll make one up just for you." This last is flirtatious, knowing.

Methos suppresses long-dormant memories of ice and mayhem and the heat of Loki's skin. He takes a controlled breath. "I'm less interested in names than in longevity." 

"The same might be said of me." John takes a sip, looking at Methos over the rim of his glass.

"I know what I am, John" Methos answers, trying to supplant the name Loki in his head. "You're not like me."

Breezily: "Oh, we're as alike as we ever were."

Again, memories rise, and Methos shuts them out. "No one ever made me a trickster god," he points out, pulling himself into banter. "I got relegated to being your son, Loki, Mare's Mother and Wolf's Father."

"At least you were the wolf and not the mare," John answers with a bright smile. "I wonder what happened to Sleipnir." 

"Don't you know?" He cannot believe the implied ignorance. John was responsible for her death.

John shakes his head, and laughs. "That eight legs legend had to come from somewhere. I guessed you and she were under that chieftan. Wotan, was it?" He gives a slight leer and flick of the eyebrows at the word under. "You both had some experience with that." There is a slight show of tongue, all the more obscene because of its subtlety.

Methos ignores it, forcing down the alluring combination of anger and lust. "You really don't know?"

"No. So, are you here for Auld Lang Syne, sonny boy, or up for something new?"

He answers testily. "A bit of both, perhaps. Tell me, is it fun being worshiped?"

"I think I'm more to be feared and appeased than worshiped." John dips his head to look up from under the broad brim. "Don't tell me in all this time you've never tried it?"

"Being worshiped? It's been known to happen. I learned to avoid it. And not to trust it."

"I'll bet." 

John's smile is smug, knowing, and irritating. 

Methos asks, "Why look me up now?"

"We had some good times."

"Depending on your definition of good. So that's all? Just old times and a 'What have you been up to the last forty centuries?'" He is becoming impatient.

"No, not just that. Business, too."

"Mutual advantage?"

"Wasn't it always mutual?" John bats his lashes, the flutter grates on Methos' nerves. Loki was never this campy. 

"Get on with it."

"Then let me introduce our third." Constantine's timing is impeccable. He stands at John's elbow at just that moment. "John Constantine, meet Adam Pierson. Pierson, Constantine."

Methos is only slightly surprised to find himself shaking hands with the man in the tie, who says, "Evenin', squire." Southern England, Methos guesses from the accent, and loaded with irony, he guesses from the choice of words.

John rises. "I'm for the loo. You two get acquainted."

The two taller men stare at each other for a moment. Methos breaks the ice. "Known him long?"

"Long enough to know he's unscrupulous, amoral, and not entirely human. Yourself?"

"Long enough to learn all the same things." Methos does not admit he only just learned the latter. He smiles with one corner of his mouth. "We're supposed to be getting acquainted. So what about you?"

Constantine's answering smile conveys sarcasm. "Ah, two out of the three these days, I suppose. Shall I guess that fits you, too?"

"It does, but I'm not telling which two," Methos prevaricates, for they all three apply to him. He takes a long drink of beer. "Well that's done with. What next?" 

"Any idea what he wants you for?"

"No."

"Ah. Well." Constantine wonders just how much to tell this Adam Pierson, and decides to throw out a baited line. "He's been on a scavenger hunt since I met him. There must be something on the list he thinks you'll help him get." 

"What kinds of things has he been collecting?"

"Feathers from angels, kisses from Death. That sort of thing."

Impossible things. Like the life of an Immortal. Methos curses himself for his curiosity, for coming to Boston to satisfy it.

Constantine is still talking. "Whatever it is, it won't be what he says it is."

"Sounds like him." Methos' answer is automatic, but it brings him back into the present.

"He does have a tendency to fuck with a bloke."

In his many years, Methos has learned to gauge people. There's something about Constantine, an air of detachment he usually associates with older immortals, with people who have seen and done much. "You don't seem the type to be fucked with."

Constantine grins. "Not usually, no. Does anyone ever fuck with him?"

"Successfully?" Methos muses for a moment, sifting through memories thousands of years old. An image strikes of three bodies tangled on a fur cloak thrown down on the frozen blood of a battlefield. Another image shows a saddle made of the woman's skin and bone. Fuck him, yes. Fuck with him? "No." 

"He's on his way back." Constantine gestures with his drink. "Anything you want to tell me before he gets here?" 

"Dangerous friend."

"You or him?"

John retakes the barstool before Methos can answer, settling himself between them. "All friends now?"

Methos, dry: "But of course."

Constantine, smirking: "Bosom pals."

John slumps and buries his nose in his snifter, muttering, "Sardonic in stereo. What was I thinking?"

Over his back, glances from green and blue eyes negotiate a silent pact.

*

"Shall we just cut to the chase?" Constantine asks. "What are you after and where is it?"

"'Where' is the Harvard Museum of Natural History. 'What' is a glass reproduction of a pomegranate, so real in appearance that you can't tell until you touch it."

"And what's in it for us?"

Methos hears what Constantine really meant -- what's in it for me?

"For you, my dear boy, a stibnite wand, shaped to the hand, mined as a single piece."

Constantine has no idea what stibnite is, though the word is familiar. "Why would I want that?"

"Brush up on your Alchemy, boy, and your genealogy. Antimony, from the Latin 'antimonium,' a word first used in writing by Constantinius Africanus in about the year 1050 to refer to what we now call stibnite."

Methos recognizes the name of his first teacher in healing, a man who sparked his interest in medicine. 

The name rattles Constantine, however, and more than he would care to admit. An alchemist in his family tree? "I'm not exactly interested in trying to turn lead into gold."

"I think you'd find the wand has other uses. 'With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.'"

"What?"

"I thought you'd recognize Milton, old boy," says John

Methos supplies another quote. "'Among his Angels, and his throne itself mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, his own invented torments.'" 

John's smile is more leer than tease, but his expression holds elements of both. "I wonder what torments Hell has invented for you?"

It isn't clear whether he's speaking to Pierson or Constantine, but Constantine catches an implication in the words. This wand might be a new tool, perhaps, to defend himself from the demons waiting for his soul. "What about him?" He indicates Pierson with his eyes.

"Haven't a clue. What do you want, Adam?"

The stress on the name tells Constantine that it is new in John's mouth, and that their third has other names.

Pierson answers the question with a question, and Constantine hears the same stress on the name. "What does anyone want, John?"

"'Dead things,'" quotes John in a slow, deep voice. "'Extra teeth.'"

Constantine recognizes the line from the novel Neverwhere. It reminds him of his last encounter with the small Chaos magician, when John's demon form emerged under the influence of five hits of Ecstasy. Constantine's prize then was a book he could not use. Perhaps the wand will make up for it. The banter continues around him.

"I've had enough of dead things, and have sufficient teeth, thanks," says Pierson. "I'll settle for a book."

John seems taken aback. "A book? I usually give Constantine books. What kind of book do you want?"

"Scroll, actually. Very old by now. Leather rather than parchment. You know the one."

John pauses, the hesitation more noticeable because it is uncharacteristic. "The one I never let you see?"

Constantine watches Pierson nod. It sounds like he's describing John's list for the scavenger hunt. 

"Why do you want it?" asks John.

"Because you never let me see it. Besides, I've become a bit of a bibliomane over the years."

"Ah." John sits silently for a moment, bouncing one foot on the rung of the barstool, his face blanker than either Constantine or Methos has ever seen it. He reaches for the snifter and downs it in one long swallow. He turns to Constantine. "Looks like it's going to be just you and me, then. Lovely to see you, Mr. Pierson," John adds without raising his gray eyes to meet the green ones that have narrowed at this sudden twist. "We must do this again in another few millennia. Constantine," he beckons, jumping down from the bar stool and heading for the door.

Constantine picks up a napkin from the bar, hands it to Methos, and follows John without a word. When Methos looks at it, there is an email address in blue ink, though when and how it was written he couldn't say.

The small mystery is ended by annoyance. He's been left with the bill.

*

****

**Round 2**

` From: apierson5K@gmail.com `  
`Subject: what next?`

`hi... here i am... now what?`

`ap`

`To: apierson5K@gmail.com `  
`From: hellblazer39@hushmail.com`  
`Subject: Re: what next? `

`Ball's in your court. If you want in, that is.`

`JC `  
\--  
`39: I will be as I will.`  
`Gematria of Nothing`  


 

`To: hellblazer39@hushmail.com`  
`From: apierson5K@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: what next?`

`i'm in... depending on what it is...`

`how closely is he watching you? okay to meet IRL?`

`ap `

`To: apierson5K@gmail.com`  
`From: hellblazer39@hushmail.com  
Subject: Re: what next?`

`> okay to meet IRL?`

`Ether he'll know or he won't. I'll ward. Meet me at the Sunset Grill and Tap in Allston tomorrow at 6:30.`

`JC ` \--  
`39: I will be as I will.`  
`Gematria of Nothing`

Hmm, thinks Methos. I wonder what he means by ward?

*

Constantine finds Adam Pierson on a stool at the bar of the Sunset Grill. The room is packed with young college students demonstrating how much fun they're having. Some of the boys carry long glasses with bulbs on the end -- the "Yard of Beer" advertised above the bar.

He stops behind Pierson's chair and begins to work. He shuts out the noise and focuses in, visualizing, casting, vibrating unspoken words in his throat. The circle is small, but it feels potent, even without physical marks. It's better that way, in a crowd, not to depend upon something that a college boy with a meter tall beer glass could easily disturb. They are now warded from John, or so he hopes.

He puts a hand on the bar next to Pierson, who looks up at him. "Constantine, I'm in heaven. Several hundred kinds of beer in one place. It's brilliant. I may never leave."

"Thought you might like it, given your choices at the Black Rose."

Methos smiles back. "I'm sorry to tell you that they don't have mixed drinks here, or I'd buy you a gin."

"So you were watching me at the Black Rose."

"You likewise, or you wouldn't have picked this bar. Although the noise makes it just the sort of place for a private conversation "

Constantine reminds himself of John's warning not to underestimate this man. He is curious about him, in part because he is the most ordinary of the people ñ characters John has brought to join them. Constantine asks, "So what name did John used to call you?"

Methos hesitates at the question, but remembers that Constantine was watching his reunion with John, and may have heard. He says, "He called me Fenrir. We were young and dramatic. He went by Loki back then. There was a woman, too, who called herself Sleipnir." He intends to make it seem as though 'back then' indicates some wild youth half a decade ago. "When did you meet him?"

"Nineteen ninety-six," answers Constantine, and Methos winces inside. Five years ago. Best to stretch his imagined timeline, then, and pretend it was in school, not university.

The next question is the obvious banality. "How did you meet him?"

"He'd heard of me, and looked me up for a little job."

"For the scavenger hunt you mentioned?"

"Yes. Why are you so interested in the list? I assume that's the scroll you meant."

"Yes. Have you seen it?"

"I should think so," Constantine answers with a smug grin. "Bastard used my blood for ink to cross off an item on it."

The answer surprises Methos. "What item?"

"Feather from an angel's wing. I had scads."

He doesn't believe Constantine speaks literally, but the other item mentioned had been impossible, too. Expecting a prosaic explanation, he asks, "Certified supernatural pinions? How did you come by those?"

"From the wings I cut off Gabriel with a chainsaw." Constantine's smile takes on an evil glint, and he adds, "After the succubus nicked his heart for me."

Methos gives the explanation all the sarcasm he feels it deserves. "Really."

"Really," says Constantine with an air of amused patience. "That's how I got them."

"I don't quite believe in the supernatural, so you're going to have to back that up."

Constantine looks at him evenly, but still amused. "If you don't believe in the supernatural, what were you doing hanging out with a demon?"

"Which one?" Methos is tempted to tell him why he doesn't believe in the supernatural. He was there when the legends of the Norsemen were created, did some of the things told in tales and ascribed to gods. That was his warm-up to become Death of the Four Horsemen. He had once believed in spirits, but his Enlightenment came many centuries before Europe's.

Yet, there is Loki, John, four thousand years later, and probably just as dangerous as he ever was, whatever he is. And there was Ahriman. No demons for five thousand years and then two in a decade?

Constantine sees something cross Pierson's face, and he suddenly doesn't know how to take the question. Is it further sarcasm, or a grain of truth? He asks, "Did you ever seen John bleed?"

The question is unexpected, but when Methos searches his memory, the answer surprises him. "No, actually I haven't." No wonder the Vikings thought he was a god. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you he bleeds fire."

Methos pauses with an old thought of unnatural heat every time they touched, but says, "No."

"Well, then." Constantine interrupts himself to order a Beamish stout, then asks, "Why are you here?"

"I told you. Curiosity."

"How long since you've seen him?"

"I'm not sure. A while." 

Pierson's casualness is a bit too studied. Constantine wants the truth. John has brought in vampires and characters from books, walked Constantine into a world where only a fictional version of himself existed in a comic book, and summoned a Death who was beautiful and smiled. What, then, is Adam Pierson?

His beer arrives, dark and covered with the fine foam indicating a nitrogen beer tap. He sips, staring into the seemingly endless line of taps behind the bar. An altercation breaks out next to him, and someone falls into him from a hard shove. The momentum pushes Constantine into Pierson, who yelps with complaint at the spilling of beer. Constantine can feel something under Pierson's coat, several feet long, slender, unyielding. If he didn't know better, he'd think it was a sword. Given the circumstances, he decides not to assume he knows better. Now John's warnings that this man is deadly take on a shape. He shoves the boy back into his friends and turns to Pierson.

Before he can ask or comment, they are interrupted by a small man in glasses, long hair, kinked and going gray, contained in a ponytail. "Excuse me," he says to Pierson. "You're sitting in my chair." 

Methos barely turns to look. "What, does it have your name on it?"

"Yes, actually." The man points calmly at an inscribed brass plate on the back of the chair. "Dan Dickson. That's me."

Constantine laughs as he reads the name, and touches Pierson on his arm. "Let's get out of here." 

Methos finishes his beer and gives up the seat. He follows Constantine out on to the street and takes a deep breath of the early evening air. Constantine had bumped into his sword, and he probably knew what it was. To take the conversation away from questions about himself, he lets out his breath, looks around at the neighborhood, and says, "Have to love rehabilitated industrial."

"What?"

"The neighborhood. This was all factories once. Just down the road were the slaughterhouses. Boston was the place for steak, once upon a time."

Constantine, setting up the magick in his head to keep the circle mobile and centered on himself, answers distractedly, "I didn't know you knew the town." 

"Oh, just some history. I'm a bit of an amateur historian." Methos glances up and down the broad street. "Where to next?"

"Let's just walk," Constantine answers. "Maybe we'll find something."

The first few minutes pass in silence. The buildings are short, no more than two or three stories, and the street broad. It is far less inviting than Beacon Hill or the streets of Cambridge. The storefronts indicate student life-styles, with signs for unfinished furniture, cheap breakfast, and body piercing. Methos notices the surroundings as he always does, but he is thinking about everything he has just heard -- about John, about angels and succubae, about impossible things. Constantine absorbs the environment without attention, and instead spends time wondering why Pierson carries a sword. 

"So," he finally says. "Do you want to hear what John has planned?"

"Sure."

"Harvard Museum of Natural History. He wants something from the glass flowers, like he said. I've checked it out. There are guards and minimal alarms. Easy-peasy."

"Which flower?"

"Fruit, remember? The pomegranate."

"Punica granatum. 'It is the peculiar property and nature of the pomegranate to kill worms,'" Methos says quietly.

"What's that?"

"Quoting. Constantinus Africanus, who John mentioned. He was a physician and Alchemist that I studied w--" Methos gives an infinitesimal pause before finishing, "I've read translations of his writings."

Constantine notices the pause, but he doesn't comment, the name still bothers him, with yet another Constantine ancestor involved in the occult. "Don't know what worms John's going to kill with a hunk of glass."

"So what did he want me for?" Methos asks. "How was I supposed to help in this break-in?"

"Dunno. What's your specialty?"

Not dying, thinks Methos. "I'm a reasonable thief, and pretty good at authenticating antiquities. What about you?"

"Reasonably good thief as well, plus glamours, that sort of thing."

"Glamours?"

"Glamour magick, or didn't you notice that we didn't pay the bill? The barkeep thought we already had done."

"You keep talking about magic and demons and angels like they're everyday things."

Constantine smirks. "Just as everyday as a chap carrying a sword in a city." 

"What sword?" 

"The one under your coat. It's a bit hot for that duster, don't you think? Don't tell me you're one of those silly Renaissance Faire types. I won't believe it."

Methos settles for neutrality. "I'm not. For one thing, Ren fairs don't exactly smell like it did back then, and everyone has teeth nowadays. Prove to me you can do magic -- and I don't mean bar tabs -- and I'll tell you why I carry a sword."

"Bloody hell. It's not a parlor trick, Pierson."

It's Methos' turn to smirk. "That's what they all say." his voice turns fey. "'There is an unbeliever in the room. The spirits are offended.'"

Constantine snorts. 

A short silence falls, while Methos considers Constantine's allusions. He knows that Constantine doesn't mean anything as trivial as a stage magic, but everyone he's ever met that said they could do magic was a bit of a jerk. Even dear Byron had been, in the end, an arsehole. 

"Tell you what," says Constantine, "why don't you join our little foray into the museum? You may get to see John as a demon, at the very least."

"All right, and if he does turn into some hypothetical nasty, I'll protect you with my hypothetical sword."

"Done. In the meantime, I suggest you visit the museum as a tourist, and decide if there's anything you want while we're in there."

"Right. Why waste the trip to Boston after all?"

"Right." 

They've reached Kenmore Square, and crossed toward the entrance to the subway. Methos stops. Something is wrong. He looks up at a new building. Places always change, but he always mourns the passing of what was, if it was interesting. Missing from the square is the Rathskeller, a seedy mess of a bar of no little repute in the music scene last time he was here. Gone and gentrified.

"What?" asks Constantine.

"Nothing. We'll be in touch."

"Right," says Constantine, and he watches Pierson descend the subway stairs before heading over to the comic book shop he'd spotted nearby. He wants to make sure he was not a character in this world. He will be disappointed.

*  
  
`To: hellblazer39@hushmail.com`  
`From: apierson5K@gmail.com`  
`Subject: windows and doors`

`checked out the spot… also spotted motion sensors in the flower room.`

`ap`

`To: apierson5K@gmail.com`  
`From: hellblazer39@hushmail.com`  
`Subject: Re: windows and doors`

`> checked out the spot... also spotted motion sensors in the flower room.`

`I know. `

`Did you figure out your own way in? Find anything you want?`

`Constantine`

`-- `  
`39: I will be as I will.`  
`Gematria of Nothing`

`To: hellblazer39@hushmail.com`  
`From: apierson5K@gmail.com  
Subject: Re: windows and doors`

`>`

`>I know. `

`should have known...`

`>Did you figure out your own way in?`

`yes`

`>Find anything you want?`

`yes and no... not so much a thing to have as a thing to do.`

`ap `

`To: apierson5K@gmail.com`  
`From: hellblazer39@hushmail.com  
Subject: Clear as Mud`

`>>Find anything you want?`

`>`

`>yes and no... not so much a thing to have as a thing to do.`

`The museum doesn't seem to pride itself on interactivity.`

`Planning to tell me?`

`Constantine`

`--`  
`39: I will be as I will.`  
`Gematria of Nothing`  
  
He receives no answer. It doesn't surprise him. Adam Pierson is a bit of a cipher, and Constantine wonders what is underneath.

*

****

Round 3

Constantine comes up the escalator from the subway into Harvard Square. Even late on a weeknight there are crowds of people, crossing the unevenly laid out streets, dodging traffic, pausing to hear buskers. There is a full band set up to his right, behind the Out of Town News building, with bright orange clamps that connect a bank car battery terminals to amplifiers and speakers.

He circles around the subway entrance, away from the band. At the back of the building is a shallow area of brick, covered with people sporting a mixed array of hair colors, stark against their black leather. Constantine carries his trench coat, for the night has not cooled the day's heat. His pockets have the tools he needs, and, because he no longer has the angel's heart, he doesn't carry a backpack any more. He does not miss the burden, but he misses the protection he thought the heart had given him.

He stops to light a cigarette and glances over the milling assembly of punks, emos, and old-school Goths. He looks for John's blond braid. There is no sign of him. All he sees is a mix of suburban rebellion, genuine hostility, and very bad decisions. 

Constantine looks up from the pit, or Pit, as he has dubbed it, to watch the rest of the crowd. They consist of the usual city mix, with a rather heavy emphasis of academics and trendy college students in the blend. He decides to wait at the newsstand, and skirts the band to reach the outdoor racks. They surprise him by holding the latest copy of Dead Brain along with the typical British imports, like the Economist and Punch. This is unusual because the magazine ceased print publication last year.

He leafs through the pages for a few minutes, taking in the topical humor, then glances up when he hears his name embedded in a nearby conversation. Constantine looks up. John is talking with a woman with straight black hair, dressed in black and velvet. She is vaguely familiar, and when she smiles he remembers her from the Goth club several years ago. There is another person with them, an Asian-looking man with freckles and chin length brown hair. 

Constantine watches the trio for a few moments before putting the magazine down. They seem like old friends, with no jealousy from the man towards John. He hasn't seen John this relaxed, friendly even, since a breakfast long ago with a one-handed waiter. Constantine moves toward them.

"Seen the previews yet?" asks the man.

"Not yet. Maybe I'll take him."

"Oh no!" laughs the woman. "He will be so sad."

"Sad at what?" asks Constantine when he reaches the group.

They glance at each other, avoiding his eyes, then John speaks. "There's a movie -- Constantine."

"Yes, that's me."

"No, the funny thing," says John, "is that it's not you. The movie's called Constantine. It's sort of meant to be you, but they get it all wrong. "

"How wrong?"

"You're played by Keanu Reeves."

"What?! That stick of wood?" Constantine takes a breath. "I have never, ever said, 'Whoa,' nor do I ever intend to. How bad is it?"

The man answers. "Special effects extravaganza, with every predictable plot twist you could ask for. The Matrix meets a cross between James Bond and The Exorcist with a dash each of Blue Steel and Turner and Hooch."

The woman giggles. "Did you know you could visit Hell by sticking your feet into water?"

"Me, or just anyone?"

"You have a super power!" She seems delighted, as if she knows Constantine, and thinks he'll be amused. And he is amused. The woman changes the subject. "If you are both here, you are up to something. What is it this time?" 

"Not telling," answers John. "We have to go."

"Good to see you, John," says the man, who Constantine has decided is Asian-Irish. They shake hands, then the woman bends slightly to give the small blond man a hug. 

"Good-bye," says John softly. He takes off his hat, kisses her on the forehead, and settles the hat on her head. 

He turns away, without comment. Constantine sees the couple watch them for a moment before the crowd comes between them. 

"Why did you give your hat away?"

Again, John's tone is curt. "I don't need it any more. Now, shall we go?"

*

They cross the street after waiting for a break in traffic, and enter into a gate in a brick wall. The buildings are brick, old by American standards, some two or three hundred years. Brick paths wend their way through trees and buildings, crossing in front of both small doors and broad marble steps. The light posts are plastered with colored paper advertising performances, political gatherings, and inside jokes. This is Harvard Yard, and despite the old canard lampooning the Boston accent -- Pahk y'a cah at Hahvahd Yahd -- there is no place for vehicles.

The exit through an opposite gate, and wander down a side street lined with university buildings. John takes a sharp right toward one that is set back from the street, the Museum of Natural History. There is a lot of construction near the building, with temporary fencing, machines and bits of rubble. Constantine looks at John, who slouches along in his oversized coat. He looks strange without the broad black leather hat. Instead of commenting Constantine asks, "What, are we going in the front door?"

"No, just walking by to see which lights are on."

Constantine glances up. There are lights on the first floor, which is not part of the public area. The second floor, where most of the displays are, is dark. A few offices on the upper floors are lit. 

"How do you want to get in?" Constantine asks as they continue down the street, "or are you coming with me?"

"I'll follow you up."

Constantine nods, then turns abruptly off the sidewalk to circle behind the building. The process involves skulking, avoiding a watchman in the construction site, and a small tear in his coat as he squeezes through temporary fencing. The window he chooses has an easy path to it, and leads into a room of South American artifacts. There are no motion detectors here. The obelisks are too heavy to lift. 

He hears a scrabble behind him a few moments later, and John climbs in the window. "Now what?"

"Through this way," says Constantine. "It'll take us past the meteorites and into the minerals room." 

"Your stibnite is on the left, third row from the far side. Can't miss it."

"I know, but there's that issue of motion detectors, and disabling them. Not to mention guards."

"I took care of the guards. You get the motion detectors. I'll wait here."

Constantine takes John at his word. He has tools instead of magick -- a screwdriver, a loop of wire, and a thin and flexible blade -- and he does not take long. In a few minutes, John leads him over to the wand. It sits, a shallow S shaped cylinder, with other examples of the mineral. Most of the other samples are smooth and rounded, or in a collection of spars like he's seen before with quartz. It is a moment's work to pick the simple lock, and he takes out the silvery, wand. Its odd shape fits every curve of his palm, with very little sticking out on either side of his closed fingers. "Feels like this was made for me."

"Mined for you, you mean. That was taken out of the ground just like that."

There is something strange about the smooth surface. It pleases Constantine to hold it, and he mistrusts the feeling. He wraps the wand, or whatever a mineralogist would call this single crystal, in a handkerchief that has seen cleaner days. He takes a small box from his pocket and places the wand in it, then tucks the package into an inside pocket of his trench coat.

"What's next?"

"Pomegranate, glass. Through that door and to the right." John points to the closed door, across from where they entered.

"I remember the layout." Constantine says. He's feeling testy for no reason. This has been the easiest job so far, and John shows no sign of growing green scales and larger teeth. He decides he has the constant itch that comes from waiting for the first shoe to drop, and tries to excuse his feelings that way. Then it hits him. John hasn't made a single one of his annoying quotes. He doesn't know what to make of that thought, and lets it go.

Constantine goes to the door first. On the other side is a gift shop, and to the right, in the middle of a glass wall, the door leading into the display of glass flowers. The gift shop appears to have only video surveillance against petty theft, and the cameras are turned off. The door to the flower room is locked and alarmed. 

Again, the effort is brief, although the motion sensors here cause more of a problem for Constantine. They are less conveniently located. When he turns at last to invite the small man to follow him, John's attention is focused on a rack of neckties.

"Look at this," he says, pulling out a sample. "DNA helices, dinosaurs, flowers. You can wear anything from the museum around your neck."

Constantine holds the door open, and gestures for John to enter. "Haven't got all night."

"No, I suppose not." John walks in and goes straight for the thing he wants. 

Constantine has already explored the room on his visit to sus out the security. The cases contain perfect reproductions of many plants and flowers, from the least interesting grasses, to a few truly stunning examples of the branches of flowering trees. Even more interesting are the reproductions of things you might only see under a microscope. Many of the samples have cross sections showing the insides of seed pods, or whatever ñ Constantine thinks the word uterus cannot be applied to plants, no matter what the botanists say - at fifty times their normal size. He has seen them all, and he waits by the door for John to claim his prize.

John returns in mere moments with an irregular red globe in his hand, and with the cross section piece as well. "What are you going to do with them?" Constantine asks.

John grins, and pops the thin cross section into his mouth. Constantine can see the outlines of seeds, but they barely register before he hears a crunching sound. John chews up a bite of the glass, swallows, and exhales smoke. Constantine guesses that the glass has cut the inside of John's mouth and throat, and the smoke tells of bleeding fire. 

"What did you do that for?" Constantine asks.

"You really should read up on your North African ancestor," John says, his word accompanied with an odd smelling mist coming out of his mouth. "Pomegranate seeds are a good anti-helmetic."

"Anti-helmet? Something that makes your head easier to bash in?"

John snorts cleanly, the burps a last cloud. "Helminth. Worm. You should know that word. Pomegranate seeds are good for treating worms."

"Ah." Constantine repeats Methos' quote: "'It is the peculiar property and nature of the pomegranate to kill worms.' And I suppose you've got glass worms that need glass seeds."

"Something like that."

Constantine eyes John. In the past, cuts have lead to the demon change, but he can see no trace that John is bulking up under the oversized trench coat. "Well," he says, "if you're done, we're done. Let's go."

"Not yet. Adam hasn't shown up yet. You are expecting him, aren't you?" John's eyes are narrowed and amused, with a hint of flame behind them.

"Maybe." Constantine watches to see John's reaction. The job had been too easy, hadn't it?

"I wonder where he's hiding?" asks John.

"Not hiding, just late to the party." Pierson enters from the doors opposite the minerals room. It leads to rooms filled with hundreds of taxidermied animals, starting with birds, and ending with a whale skeleton. He stands arms crossed, almost threatening. Constantine cannot quite read his face. 

"We don't need you," says John. "We're done already." He crunches off another piece of glass.

"No. We have unfinished business." Pierson's voice is commanding, and it surprises Constantine. It is the first indication, other than the sword, of what this man might be as ferocious as John said.

"Darling," says John, "as I recall, you left _me_."

Pierson's answering expression has an element that Constantine has only before seen on angels. Or demons. "Not how I remember it," Pierson answers.

"Come again?" John grins. "Oh! I used to say that to you a lot, didn't I?"

Constantine can see the beginnings of the change. John's smile is too wide.

Methos refuses to be respond to John's reminders. He is not one for revenge under normal circumstance, and if he were the Highlander, his sword would be out by now. He works best with information, and wants to know what John, what Loki, is. 

He says in professorial tones, "There is some discrepancy in the Norse legends about Wotan's horse, whether it was male or female."

"I should have thought the reason was obvious. Didn't he ride both you and her?" Again John leers with implication, stressing the word ride.

Constantine wonders what it is between these men. They were lovers, but this seems to go beyond that. He notes that John's hairline has changed, along with his ears, which are now greenish and morphing into points. The demon emerges.

"Oh he rode her," says Pierson. "He made her into a saddle for his stallion. The best Norse leather workers took skin and bone and made a war saddle. It took weeks for the horse to get used to the dangle of her arms and legs, but once it did they were a frightening sight. An eight legged horse, only one set was Sleipnir."

John begins to laugh. His voice drops and takes on that scouring edge that Constantine knows too well. As it goes on, Constantine tries to make sense of the words. If he's hearing this right, John was, or is, the Norse god Loki. His mind divides, half of it refusing to believe that John could be old enough to spawn such legends, the other half knowing that Constantine's own mythology had grown far beyond truth as stories spread.

By the time John recovers from his amusement, the change is complete. He is green, scaled and leonine, his yellow mane pulled back into a tight braid.

From the pull of Pierson's features, Constantine can tell he doesn't do 'astonishment' very often. Constantine gives a grin to rival John's demon teeth. "Told you."

John walks over to Methos, and uses a single black talon to close his mouth. "But Wotan couldn't kill you, could he? So he chained you up under the earth, and left you there, right Fenrir? What was the chain made of?"

"Legends say it was the footstep of a cat, the roots of a mountain, a woman's beard, the breath of fishes, the sinews of a bear, and a bird's spittle," answers Methos, feeling himself unnaturally calm in the face of the thing John has become. He is looking for his opening

He reaches up to remove the talon from under his chin, and the skin of John's hand is rough and warm, and doesn't let go.

"But really, what did Wotan do to you?" John wraps his talons around Methos' hand in a parody of a lover's caress, sharp points playing over the palm.

And that is his opening. All that Methos knows of fraud and guile has its foundation in the lessons he learned from Loki. He lets memory flood through him, re-captures everything he once felt for the man and presents it to the demon. It's an acting job, and an easy one at that. He lets his fingers return the caress.

"We were quite the trio, weren't we?" He speaks over John's shoulder to Constantine. "Ten summers as lovers, tricksters, fighters. We were something to see. When Sleipnir began to slow down, began to show her age, Loki contrived a plan. We would take over Wotan's tribe. Sleipnir would be protected." 

Constantine watches. Pierson's eyes return to the demon's face, and he says in admiration, "He lied. He wanted to be rid of her and betrayed her to Wotan. It was idiotic of me to try to rescue her."

John purrs, "Like I said, you left me."

Pierson looks back to Constantine. "You see, we had killed Wotan's children three years before, and left the bodies buried in a snow bank. They would have been found the next summer, after the thaw, a fresh wound after a winter's mourning. Loki was quite pleased with the arrangement of the bodies. It was perfectly obscene." 

Constantine's imagination fills in details, and he is suddenly afraid. His alliance with John is tenuous at best, but this is the first time he has genuinely felt like he might be in danger. Pierson sounds proud of what they had done, and Constantine suspects it was not the worst story that could be told. If they join forces again, he'll be expendable.

Methos has to ignore Constantine's fear, and his eyes move again to John's face. He reads amusement in the glowing yellow eyes. A cold fire makes it's way up his spine. It is not a feeling he often entertains, but tonight he gives in. He will have revenge. He says aloud, "It was quite a good joke, how you set us up." 

Constantine sees that Pierson smiles, eyes crinkling in pleasure and admiration as he says to John, to Loki, "Don't tell me you've waited all these years to learn the punchline?"

"Well there've been rumours," John answers with a laugh like a distant blacksmith's shop. "Do tell."

"The saddle… I must say Wotan was inspired. He kept trying to kill me and watch me rot, but it didn't work. Lucky for me he never took an axe to my neck."

John raises their joined hands, and runs a talon across Methos' throat. "Lucky for me, too. So what did he tie you with under the earth?"

Methos lowers his head, rubbing his cheek against John's hand. "The sinews of a bear, wet, so that they would shrink and cut off circulation. The 'breath of a fish' was that he rubbed my skin with fish guts. For 'the footsteps of a cat' he left a cat in the cave, I suppose to torture me when it went after the fish smell, and a bird so that I would know when my air was about to run out. The 'beard of a woman,' that was Sleipnir's pretty bush, skinned off her and tied around my chin."

"Hair side in?" John asks, as softly as his metallic voice will allow. Methos nods, gently biting John's fingers. Constantine does not understand Pierson's behavior, but Methos is gauging the thickness of the scaled skin.

John leans over to kiss Pierson on the top of his head. "That's brilliant," he sighs.

Constantine thinks that from they way they are acting, in a few moments they will either fuck or kill him. He'd rather not be around for either event.

"It was brilliant," says Pierson. "I though you'd come up with it." Constantine watches Pierson look up, and does not understand what he sees in his face. Longing? But for what? How could he want something that had condemned him to that torture.

"The odd thing," Peirson continues, "was that he left me with a knife in my teeth."

"And that's how you escaped?" John asks, steel bending in the notes of his voice.

"Eventually. I still have it." The demon and the Immortal look into each other's eyes. "You remember how sentimental I can be." Then Methos lets his true feeling show on his face, and his voice drops. "I still miss Sleipnir, you bastard."

With those words Methos' free left hand moves swiftly. He buries the long knife hilt deep, blade angled up from the solar plexus. If John has a heart, he has pierced it. Methos is not prepared for the explosion of fire that follows.

Constantine is surprised by Pierson's attack, but not by the flames. In seconds he has grabbed the closest fire extinguisher. He can tell it is carbon dioxide and not chemical foam. Good. That will smother and freeze the fire. 

It is the freeze that he wants.

He stops spraying, and moves to stand between John's splayed legs. John's demon claws have ruined yet another pair of boots. Constantine isn't clear in his own head how he made the decision, but he leans down, and removes the knife with a downward, gutting stroke, squeezing the handle of the fire extinguisher at the same time. He sends cold and carbon dioxide directly into the wound. By the time the cylinder is empty, Methos stands beside him again.

Constantine looks over. Most of Adam's hair is gone on one side, but his skin is unblemished. He thinks he sees a crackle of electricity move from Adam's cheek to his ear, but he cannot be sure. The words from the bar echo in his head: _unscrupulous, amoral, and not entirely human._

"Is he dead?" Pierson asks.

"Not sure. Killing demons is never easy."

"So I've heard."

"You had me going there," says Constantine. "I was starting to worry."

Pierson looks at him. "No worry. That was between me and him. I've no quarrel with you, unless you've got a problem with killing him."

"No, I don't suppose so. Never seen a god die, though. That'll be a new one." Constantine has never met anything quite like Pierson, either. "We're all right, then, right?"

"If you give me back my knife."

Constantine hands it to Pierson, hilt first. He looks at it as Pierson takes it. "That thing looks like modern military, not something Norse."

"I lied." Pierson smiles, and with his half-singed head it makes him look deranged.

"Ah," says Constantine, looking back at the demon in the black trench coat. "What do we do with him?"

"We could set him up in one of the display cases." Methos considers for a moment. "Reptile or Mammal?"

"But is he dead?" asks Constantine. If Death is here, he thinks, he would like to see her again.

"Got another fire extinguisher?" Pierson asks. "I'll take his head off just to be sure, but I don't want to blow the place up."

Constantine turns to fetch another extinguisher from the minerals room, and pauses at the door. "Did you notice I haven't yet said, 'I told you so'?"

"Yes you did," Pierson snorts. "Haven't seen you do any magic yet, though."

Constantine flips two fingers on his way through the door. When he returns, Pierson is standing with a two-handed broadsword over his shoulder. "Let's get this over with."

"Wait. Let's search him first," Constantine suggests. "You want that scroll, right, mate?" 

"Ah yes. Must be getting old," says Pierson. 

"And how old are you?" Constantine asks as he kneels down beside John's body. 

Methos decides to be honest. "Five thousand years, give or take a few decades." Constantine seems unsurprised.

"Really?" he says as he opens John's coat. "Can I ask you something?"

Methos is ready for this, and he sighs. "No, I don't know the secret to life."

Constantine chuckles. "Selfish question, then. How many Constantines have you met?"

"Oh." Methos thinks for a minute. "Three, counting you, starting with Constantine of Africa. He was my first teacher in medicine. Since then, just Lady Johanna Constantine in England." He pauses. "Four. There was a Constantine that Byron knew who talked a lot of rubbish about spirits and demons."

"Demons, eh?" smiles Constantine. "Rubbish alright." He chucks John's unmoving head under the chin. 

Constantine finds few things in John's coat pockets, one of which is an envelope addressed to him. He assumes it will tell him how to get back home, and he pockets it along with the scroll. There is loose change in John's trouser pockets, and a cell phone on the belt, but before he can look further, he realizes that there are flashing police lights outside the building.

Then an amplified voice reaches them through the brick walls. "Bomb Squad. Repeat, this is the Bomb Squad. We have received a report of explosives on the premises. If anyone is left in the building, evacuate now."

"Felching heck!" says Constantine. "That's how he took care of the guards. He phoned in a bomb threat." He tosses aside the fire extinguisher. "Let's give them an explosion, then. Your swing, guv."

Methos breathes in, fueling the cold fire of revenge and instinctively, if unnecessarily, preparing himself for the Quickening that follows an Immortal's death. His stroke is practiced. It is no easy thing to behead a prone body with a sword.

A gout of fire follows the severing of John's neck. It shoots over ten feet with a noise like thunder, leaving a wake of melted plastic dinosaurs and smoldering T-shirts in the gift shop. Constantine can feel the heat from where he has backed up to the doors leading into the animal displays. The sprinkler system comes on, and fire alarms begin to ring.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Forgot about that, didn't we?"

Methos grabs John's head, and runs into the room with the animal displays. Constantine grabs the glass pomegranate, which is surprisingly intact, and follows. They run through the maze of glass cases, through the artificial rain, to a back exit. 

Methos detours to leave John's head, part lion, part lizard and dull-eyed at last, on the floor next to the platypus. 

They make it to the back exit, ignoring the Emergency Exit Only warnings. and tumble through the door into the night. Another alarm rings behind them. Methos and Constantine each worry about how to disappear from the arriving police and fire units. They are soaking wet and in the wrong place for anyone to assume innocence.

Thunder cracks, and, like a cartoon, rain follows. Constantine hears something that sounds like John's grating steel laugh, but it could be creaking metal from the construction site nearby. 

They walk away from the museum. "I need a beer," says Methos. Constantine agrees with the sentiment, and leads the way through residential streets, away from Harvard Square. In five minutes the downpour stops.

"Wait," says Peirson when they reach a dark yard. He pulls the knife, checks the edge on his thumb, then quickly shaves off the rest of his hair. Constantine decides to stay on the friendly side of a blade that sharp.

After a few blocks, they reach a commercial district. They pass a restaurant named Dali, which Methos thinks looks more Dada than surreal, and go into a place called the Kendall Cafe. There is a band, and while it is loud, they're not bad. The girl singing lead is reasonably cute and thankfully on key.

They get beers at the bar, and sit in the least loud corner. "The scroll," Pierson says. 

Constantine pulls it from his pocket. It is only slightly damp on the edges. He watches Pierson loosen the fastenings and unroll the skin.

"Can you read it?" Constantine asks, coming to look over Pierson's shoulder. He notes a spot of hair he missed in the back. "It's no language I know."

"I can read it."

The list is several hundred items long. Some have check marks, and some are crossed through so that they are difficult to read. Most of the items are impossible things, although all have a neat line through the words. The egg of the roc, the name of a star. 'Feather from an angel' is crossed through with a single red-black line. 

"My blood," says Constantine, pointing.

Methos nears the end, expecting to read 'the life of an immortal' in the list. Everything is crossed off but the last item. He reads it, pauses, reads it again, and begins to laugh.

"What? What is it? There's only one thing left." says Constantine as he retakes his seat across from Pierson. "What was he supposed to get?"

Methos searches through his head for the best translation, and pulls his laughter under control. He looks at Constantine with all the seriousness he can muster.

"He had to get his come-uppance."

It takes Constantine a moment to process, then he begins to chuckle.

Behind them on stage, the girl sings a song neither of them recognize. The beat marches over their laughter and Constantine stops to listen to the words.

"Gonna peel the world like an orange, and savor every bite…"

Constantine looks up. The woman singing looks directly at him for just a moment, and, for a fraction of that second, he thinks he sees a flash of fire behind her eyes.

"Fuck," he whispers, looking at her long blond hair.

"What?" asks Pierson. "What's wrong."

Constantine shakes his head and looks away from the band. 

"Nothing."

**Author's Note:**

> John quotes Milton and Neil Gaiman.
> 
> The first was for Deb, the second for ibn Ali, and this was for me.


End file.
